No guarantees: What do Kurds think of the Damascus-SDF agreement?
QAMISHLI — A mood of cautious anticipation hangs over the last parts of northeastern Syria controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), where residents are waiting to see what comes next.
Syrian government security forces entered Hasakah city, Qamishli and the Shuyukh area west of Kobani (Ain al-Arab) last week as part of a January 30 integration agreement between the SDF and Damascus.
In Hasakah and Qamishli, public expressions of support for the deployment of Damascus’s Internal Security Forces were small, and limited to some Arab-majority neighborhoods.
No similar scenes of welcome were seen in Kurdish-majority neighborhoods—but nor were there scenes of explicit rejection. At the western entrance to Qamishli city, a small group gathered as government forces entered on February 3, holding Kurdish flags and chanting slogans glorifying the “Rojava resistance.” In Hasakah city, a group of journalists and members of the SDF-affiliated Asayish security forces repeated similar slogans.
Public sentiment varies across SDF areas of northeastern Syria, especially among Kurds. For now, many prefer wary watchfulness to publicly expressing any strong position.
Syria Direct spoke with a range of civilian Kurdish sources in Hasakah and Qamishli about their views of the integration agreement and changing reality in northeastern Syria. While all are cautious, most hope the current understanding persists and the ceasefire holds, sparing the region from a military confrontation with catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
The latest integration agreement “gave us a sense of reassurance that there will be no killing or displacement, especially with the entry of the security forces,” Hasakah city resident Nazdar Muhammad, 43, said.
Relief and worry
Across the political, social and cultural spectrum, Kurds in northeastern Syria met the latest agreement with a sense of relief. However, “this relief is mixed with great anxiety,” Abdulhamid Suleiman, a journalist from Ras al-Ain (Serekaniye) living in Qamishli, told Syria Direct.
“The government and the factions that are part of it have caused massacres and disasters within other Syrian communities, not to mention that hate speech against Kurds is at its most intense,” he added.
Many Kurds fear “violations, individual behaviors and [Damascus’s] inability to control the forces,” Abdulbaset Sieda, a Syrian Kurdish politician and academic, told Syria Direct. These are “legitimate” concerns,” he added, given “experiences in other areas that left deep wounds in the Syrian body and memory.”
Suleiman and Sieda referred to sectarian killings that took place during violence in Alawite communities on the Syrian coast in March 2025, and in the Druze-majority province of Suwayda the following July.
“Confidence in these forces’ ability to impose security and stability is not entirely solid,” Sieda said. “There are widespread fears of possible disputes, disagreements or even differing interpretations of some of the agreed-upon clauses.”
While Muhammad felt reassured by the January 30 agreement, “the reassurance remains incomplete,” she said. “It could collapse at any moment, just like the previous agreements.”
Hasakah city resident Yousef Ahmad, a father of four who works at a civil society organization, is less worried. It was before the latest agreement that he and his family were most anxious, “fearing the region would slide into a big war,” he recalled. “After the agreement and the entry of government forces, the situation returned to normal.”
“Government security forces entering both Hasakah and Qamishli is a good step, since it blocks the path for some parties that were hoping for a wide-scale war,” Ahmad said. He considered violations or massacres targeting Kurds, or unrest in Hasakah, to be unlikely, since the number of government forces deployed to the area is “not large.” The SDF has said between 200 and 250 government forces entered Hasakah and Qamishli.
“Their basic task is to open official [government] institutions, so there is no cause for concern about them,” Ahmad added. Instead, his concerns center on the agreement itself, as “it is still somewhat vague, and there are contradictory statements from the two sides about it.”
Regarding the deployment of the Internal Security Forces, the Asayish and SDF have said their mission as temporary and they will return to their own areas once these tasks are complete. Statements from Damascus, however, indicate its forces will have a continued presence.
“The ambiguity of the situation and uncertainty about the near future—not knowing what will happen after integration,” is what worries Maya Hussein, 24, in Qamishli. “The [previous] massacres indicate that these groups [government forces] do not accept difference and have a preconceived view that we are not Muslims, not to mention the extent of the threats they spread through social media,” she said.
Even so, Hussein is convinced that the January 30 agreement “stopped the bloodshed, curbed attempts at extermination that could have occurred and helped life in the city gradually return to normal.” She accepted the idea of government forces remaining “within specific parts of the city, without roaming its neighborhoods and exposing civilians” to danger.
Inside Hasakah city, Internal Security Forces have been stationed at the traffic police station near the Sinalco roundabout at the city’s northern entrance. In Qamishli, they are stationed within the “security square,” as well as at the Qamishli International Airport.
For his part, Rostam Othman, 37, who owns a shop in Qamishli’s central market, believes the entry of Damascus’s security forces could bring “a real benefit to the area, by activating civil and service institutions—from immigration and passports to courts and border crossings,” he told Syria Direct.
That is also what Delsha, 40, another Qamishli resident, is focused on. Beyond a security presence, the agreement should also include the return of government education and institutions absent since the fall of the Assad regime, she said, asking to be identified only by her first name.
Following the collapse of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024, the SDF took control of what are known as the security squares in Hasakah and Qamishli. Those areas housed institutions affiliated with the government in Damascus, including the civil registry, courts, immigration and passports office, commercial and real estate banks and the education directorate. As a result, residents had to travel to Damascus or Deir e-Zor to complete administrative transactions.
Rallying around the SDF
Despite past criticisms of the SDF, a broad segment of Kurds in northeastern Syria now view it as the only option to protect them and guarantee their political and cultural rights in the absence of trusted alternatives.
“The SDF made many mistakes, and its plans failed. Most Kurds were not pleased with the SDF expanding into areas where there is no Kurdish majority,” Ahmad said. “Even during the fight against IS, it should not have entered other cities, because we lost many martyrs in that war.”
What many want from the SDF now is to “protect Kurdish cities and ensure political and cultural rights within a unified Syria, not secession or military expansion,” Ahmad said.
In recent weeks, social media platforms have seen critiques of SDF and Autonomous Administration leaders, blamed for mismanagement and a lack of diplomacy that narrowed the strategic options available today, as well as a lack of transparency with the public.
“Criticism of the SDF increased after the withdrawal from Deir Hafer, Maskaneh, Tabqa, Raqqa and Deir e-Zor,” said Akid Mishmish, head of the news department at the Qamishli-based North Press Agency.
“The criticism was originally directed at the project, which has effectively collapsed and proven to be shaky and flimsy from the start,” he added, referring to the idea of the democratic nation and “brotherhood of peoples” between Kurds, Arabs and other groups, a “project that was not welcomed internationally, regionally or even locally.”
However, criticism of the SDF or disagreement with its political and ideological loyalties does not change the fact that there is “adherence to it,” which increased “after parties affiliated with the government committed massacres in other Syrian communities,” journalist Suleiman said.
“People have rallied around the SDF, which is practically their only option, because there is no trust in other parties, especially hardline Islamist groups,” he added.
Hakim Ahmad, a journalist from Qamishli, agreed. “The SDF is the only option for Syrian Kurds in the face of war,” he told Syria Direct. “The greater the risk of war, the more Kurds cling to the SDF.”
Constitutional guarantees
In the wake of the latest integration agreement, “the Autonomous Administration, which was announced unilaterally, no longer exists,” Sieda said. While he expects local communities will have some administrative and security powers, “the nature of these arrangements will become clear later, given the ambiguity of the agreed-upon terms.”
Caught between conditional satisfaction and legitimate fears, the Kurdish public is waiting to see what will come next. Many believe true stability can only be achieved through written guarantees, clear trust-building measures and an agreed-upon mechanism to resolve differences, far from the logic of force and weapons.
Othman said the basic requirement is for “the rights of Kurds, as well as the rights of all Syrian communities, to be protected constitutionally.” Interim decisions or presidential decrees—as in the case of President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s January 17 decree recognizing Kurdish rights—are “not real guarantees,” he added. “They must be explicitly and clearly established in the constitution.”
To prevent the integration agreement from collapsing, it must be implemented “within a clear political, constitutional and legal framework,” Mishmish said. “The Syrian government is obliged to amend the constitution and recognize the Syrian Kurdish national identity and the rights of Kurdish people if it intends to proceed with implementing this agreement. Guarantees, first and foremost, are constitutional guarantees.”
“Dispelling concerns through written agreements, strengthening confidence-building measures and agreeing on a mechanism to resolve disputes” is what is needed today, Sieda added. He hoped recent meetings in Damascus between the Kurdish National Council and the government would result in “written commitments that constitute tangible outcomes.”
This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
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